Tuesday, September 30, 2008

A New Post! A New Post!

Over on her blog, my friend Lynley recently posted 100 things about herself in honor of her 500th post. While I have not posted 500 times (at the rate I'm going, I'd be lucky to hit 500 posts by the time my youngest graduates from college), I started thinking that maybe a 100 things about me post would be a good way to get back into blogging - hopefully on a more regular basis. So in honor of my once again return to blogging, here are 100 things about me...some you may know, some you may not.

1. I was born in Missouri.

2. I've lived in Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas.

3. In spite of living in the South my entire life, I am sometimes mistaken for being from up north because of my accent (or lack thereof).

4. I have one precious 3 year old daughter that looks just like I did at her age, and I'm currently 14 and 1/2 weeks pregnant with our second child.

5. I love being pregnant! I have blissfully easy first trimesters (I'm so sorry Hannah and Leah!) and am fascinated by the miracle of pregnancy.

6. Jeremy and I met in college and knew after our first date that we would get married.

7. We started talking about wedding dates less than 2 weeks into our relationship.

8. The first house we lived in after we got married was also one of the stops on our first date. (Some of Jeremy's friends lived there and had a group of us over after our date.)

9. Jeremy proposed to me the night before my birthday after a whirlwind trip to the Old Mill in Little Rock and then climbing Sugarloaf Mountain in Heber Springs and then a trip back to Searcy.

10. He proposed to me in a swing on the Harding campus. It was the first time we'd ever sat in the infamous Harding swings together...thus breaking the traditional "three swings and a ring" motto.

11. The year that Jeremy and I got married was also the year of my parents 25th anniversary, my grandparents 50th anniversary, and had my great-grandparents still been alive, it would have been their 75th anniversary. I am quite confident that this trend will not continue with Lauren as she would be 17 when she got married, and I'm pretty sure her daddy's not even going to allow her to date until she's 23 or so.

12. My closest girlfriend throughout middle, junior, and high school has red hair, and we ended up being pregnant at the same time with our first children - who are less than 2 months apart.

13. My closest girlfriend now has red hair and is also pregnant (with her first child), and we are due a week and a half apart.

14. I have the closest group of girlfriends I have had since high school at this point in my life, and I am thankful everyday that God has blessed me with them.

15. I was baptized on my in-laws wedding anniversary. And as best as he can remember, Jeremy was baptized on my parents wedding anniversary. We didn't know each other back then :)

16. I have a younger brother who is almost 3 years to the day younger than me. Happy Birthday Friday Chad!

17. In high school, my brother was one of my best friends...he still is.

18. I act at least half my age when my brother and I are together (he does too)..much to the dismay and amazement of our spouses and parents.

19. When we were little, we used to get in trouble for making scenes because we were laughing so much. On second thought, maybe we never got in trouble for it, but we always made scenes because we laughed so hard. Um, scratch that when we were little part...we still do.

20. I was a runner up in a beauty pageant when I was little. After that crushing defeat, I was never in another beauty pageant.

21. I have never broken any bones.

22. I still have my tonsils, appendix, spleen, and gallbladder.

23. I never had a cavity until after Lauren was born...now I've had 5.

24. For the first two years of Lauren's life, I did proofreading for a gospel publishing company...mostly in languages I can't read or speak.

25. For the last year, I've been formatting commentaries for the same company in the Indian languages of Hindi and Punjabi. I neither read nor speak either of these languages.

26. I've been married over 1/3 of my life.

27. I love the holiday trifecta of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas!

28. Fall is my favorite time of year.

29. I am a HUGE sports fan...mostly baseball, college football, and college basketball.

30. Jeremy is not a sports fan at all. We always joke that God has a sense of humor since we ended up together.

31. I love the Chicago Cubs, and I have already taught Lauren to sing "Go Cubs Go."

32. I also love the Razorbacks, and I have already taught Lauren to call the hogs. We're working on the fight song.

33. I have sung during the seventh inning stretch at Wrigley Field when Harry Carey was still alive.

34. My dream summer vacation would be a road trip to visit every ballpark in the Major League.

35. Until I worked as an accountant with quarter end closings that I had to take care of, I took off of work every year after I graduated from college to watch the Opening Day of baseball.

36. I've also been known to take off work during March Madness.

37. I have filled out a bracket for March Madness since I believe my sophomore year of high school - it might have been my junior year though...it was so long ago.

38. I no longer have to take off work for Opening Day or March Madness since I am blessed to stay home with Lauren.

39. I am instilling a love of sports in my child even at her tender age.

40. Jeremy doesn't understand why I think it's necessary to watch some games crouched in the floor yelling at the television when the players can't hear me anyway.

41. I love to read when I have time.

42. One of my favorite things to read is cookbooks.

43. I also love to cook.

44. I love to sing.

45. In high school, I was a member of choir, and several other ensembles that I had to try out for, including a female equivalent of a barbershop quartet.

46. I was Nurse #2 in South Pacific my sophomore year of high school.

47. I co-wrote a musical with a few other people named "The Show Must Go On" in one of my high school drama classes. It was loosely based on "Weekend at Bernie's" but set in a high school during a production of a Shakespeare play. I was the character who was killed when a fake prop sword was replaced with a real sword. I spent most of the short musical tied to a dolly and rolled around the stage.

48. I have been to Michigan, Chicago, Texas, and Mexico on mission trips.

49. I had more long-distance relationships in high school than relationships with guys that lived in the same town as me.

50. I got very good at writing letters in high school.

51. I was a delegate to Girls State.

52. I went to Washington in junior high and loved every minute of it. I'd love to go back now though since 2 of my most vivid memories of that trip consist of one of the guys from the school we went with from Texas getting in major trouble for chewing gum at Monticello, then getting in even more trouble for spitting said gum off the back veranda at Monticello, and watching Color Me Badd on Beverly Hills 90210in one of the hotel rooms on the trip. Good times my friends.

53. I love the Back to the Future movies.

54. Flying makes me nervous...even though my brother's a pilot and assures me it's safe.

55. I love musicals and musical theatre - a love I share with my husband.

56. I've seen lots of musicals, but the one that I loved the most that almost made me want to yell "Bravo" at the end was "Les Mis." My favorite music from a musical is "Wicked."

57. My most surreal theatre moment was seeing "Spamalot" at the Orpheum in Memphis and being amazed at the amount of laughter at so many jokes that only Monty Python fans would get. In my head, Monty Python and theatre-goers aren't really the same people - except of course for Jeremy and me.

58. I have a very close relationship with my mother that I only hope Lauren and I will have someday.

59. I graduated with a degree in Accounting, although I am a rare personality type to be an Accountant.

60. One of the only regrets in my life is that I majored in Accounting. :) I should have been a librarian.

61. I have been to the top of Pikes Peak, Mount Evans, and several mountains in the Rocky Mountain National Park..all while being 7 weeks pregnant. Thankfully, I only had to ride in a car...not climb them.

62. I tend to get motion sick when I'm pregnant, but not any other time in my life.

63. I love zoos. At one point this summer, I had been to 3 different zoos, in 3 different states, in 3 weeks.

64. I am a huge Brad Paisley fan (another thing I share with my brother). I have seen him in concert once, and it was one of the best concerts of my life. His guitar skills amaze me.

65. I have seen the Eagles in concert twice.

66. I have seen Keith Urban in concert twice..once when I was pregnant with Lauren. She moved and danced for the first 3 songs. He is also an amazing guitar/banjo/piano player.

67. I own every CD Brad Paisley and Keith Urban have ever recorded and am giddy that they've recorded a duet together now.

68. I have also seen Sister Hazel, Kenny Chesney, Hootie and the Blowfish, Rascal Flatts, and James Taylor in concert.

69. I have a wide variety of tastes in music.

70. In high school, 2 friends and I started a singing group called "TLC." We did not sing "Waterfalls," nor did we dance around in skimpy clothes or sing hip-hop. However, like the other TLC, we called ourselves that because those were our initials.

71. Our biggest venue was opening an area-wide devotional one time for the gospel acapella group Straight Company.

72. I love the show "The Office." That's what she said - hee hee :)

73. I have been on 3 cruises. Two with Jeremy's family, and one with friends.

74. On one of those cruises, I climbed El Castillo at Chichen Itza.

75. On the first cruise we ever took, most of the passengers on the boat were stranded in the town of Merida overnight while the boat went on to Cozumel without us. My two nieces were still on the boat with a nanny when it left. We rode buses across the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico to catch up with the boat the next day.

76. On another cruise, we went snorkeling with a diving company in Cozumel. I was six months pregnant and extremely awkward. I pretty much fell out of the boat trying to get into the water and scared all of the crewman working on the boat that day.

77. I am not graceful...even when I'm not pregnant. In fact, pregnancy only increases my awkwardness.

78. I am passing that lack of grace on to my child.

79. I have no filter when I'm pregnant.

80. I also suffer tremendously from what my sister-in-law has termed "placenta brain" when I am pregnant. I'm lucky I can remember where I live.

81. I love Diet Coke, and sadly, so does my 3 year old.

82. I went to New York City in December of 2001. Jeremy and I stayed in a hotel right on Times Square.

83. We saw Peter Jennings on David Letterman, Kevin Spacey waved at me from the studios of the Today show (you know he did Jeremy), and I met Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy from Fox News Today after their show was over.

84. Jeremy stayed behind in the hotel room getting ready for the class he was taking the morning I went over to the Fox News studios. The television was on Fox News when I left, and he just happened to be putting his shoes on and looked up at the television about the same time I made it to the studio windows to grin and wave like an idiot on national television. I think my parents still have the tape of me in the Fox News windows and us in the audience of Letterman somewhere at their house. A few months later, my brother appeared in the same windows at Fox when he visited New York.

85. I love Mexican food. In fact, I would eat it about every other day if I didn't think my family would get sick of it.

86. I bought Veggietales and Disney DVD's long before we had a child.

87. I love taking naps...especially on Sundays.

88. I also love snow, and yet we live in an area that rarely gets any.

89. I started taking piano lessons when I was 4. I cannot play any instrument now. I can pick out songs on the piano, but it's very painful for all listening.

90. I have had 2 dogs that I really remember in my life. One was a German Shepherd named Kizzi. We got her when I was 10...she lived until I was 24. The other is Buddy. We've had him for 10 and 1/2 years now.

91. I love big dogs, and until I got pregnant with Lauren, Jeremy and I volunteered at a Great Dane rescue. I will make exceptions for a few small dogs (namely Ella).

92. I have been known to dress Buddy up - especially for Halloween.

93. I love entertaining and am happiest when our house is full of family and friends.

94. My aunt was 16 when I was born...I was 16 when her daughter was born, and now her daughter will be 16 when this child is born.

95. I have never flown overseas.

96. In second grade, I was convinced that Davy Jones of the Monkees was going to marry me someday. I cried when I found out he was older than my parents. I'm thankful now that he was :)

97. I am not a morning person, and right now, I'm not a night person either.

98. I rarely get anywhere on time. My friends know this about me and yet love me anyway. Of course, my friends know lots of things about me and love me anyway. I'm pretty sure I'll never know why.

99. I go by my middle name. My first name is Carol..after my mother.

100. I love playing board games, card games, trivia games, and party games. However, not many people I'm around do, so I don't get to play them very often.


If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. Hopefully, I'll be back to posting more frequently now. At least, I'm going to try hard...for a couple of weeks anyway!

7 comments:

Joanna Ashlock said...

I am so happy you are pregnant! Congratulations!! What a cute post--it was fun reading all those interesting tidbits about you and your family. We love you and miss you!

Phillips Family said...

Okay...I am about in tears over this post. It makes me miss you SOOO much! I was laughing out loud and saying "oooh" so much while reading this it was starting to bug my husband...but it was filled with such good memories!

A few comments on your 100 things:
* I frequently remind Tobe of how I participated in number 33 as well to make him jealous

* Nurse #2 and #4 really made that entire performance, don't you think?

* Number 47 really was a great play. We were such talented thespians.

*In number 49, you forgot to mention the unfortunate 4+ hour video we once made for those long-distance boyfriends. We were so cool, huh?

And I believe you need to add #101: My friend and I once had a miscommunication about a sniper being on top of the Pizza Inn roof.

Love you, Friend!

Unknown said...

I'llplay board games with you, Leanne!

Diana Lynn said...

Loved reading all that cool stuff about you....when will you find out the baby's sex...or will you ?
Got names already ?

Anonymous said...

*There's no way that South Pacific would have even been done if it hadn't been for Nurse #2 and 4!

*I can't believe after being such awesome playwrights that we didn't pursue careers on Broadway - we really should have shopped that script.

*Does it terrify you that somewhere in Michigan is a 4 hour video of our teenage goofiness floating around? Oh, who are we kidding, it was probably taped over a week later with episodes of Full House or American Gladiators.

*And I can only chalk up "placenta brain" to failing to include your number 101 somewhere in my list!

Love you too Friend!

Amy said...

I enjoyed this post and its great to read another lp post:-) Congrats on baby #2 and I'm glad your pregnancy is going well!
Was that first date "A Walk In The Clouds"?

Traci said...

So glad to see you posting again. Congrats! I hadn't heard the news yet. I'm excited for you and glad to hear you have been feeling well. I feel like I know you so much better now. I like the new look of your blog. Traci